Having travelled the road several times from Cincinnati to Lake Erie, I travelled through without much fear or difficulty.  My friends in Perrysburgh, who knew that I had gone back into the very jaws of slavery after my family, were much surprised at my return, for they had heard that I was re-captured.

After I had waited three months for the arrival of Malinda, and she came not, it caused me to be one of the most unhappy fugitives that ever left the South.  I had waited eight or nine months without hearing from my family.  I felt it to be my duty, as a husband and father, to make one more effort.  I felt as if I could not give them up to be sacrificed on the “bloody altar of slavery.”  I felt as if love, duty, humanity and justice, required that I should go back, putting my trust in the God of Liberty for success.

CHAPTER VII.

My safe return to Kentucky.—­The perils I encountered there.—­Again betrayed, and taken by a mob; ironed and imprisoned.—­Narrow escape from death.—­Life in a slave prison.

I prepared myself for the journey before named, and started back in the month of July, 1839.

My intention was, to let no person know my business until I returned back to the North.  I went to Cincinnati, and got a passage down on board of a boat just as I did the first time, without any misfortune or delay.  I called on my mother, and the raising of a dead body from the grave could not have been more surprising to any one than my arrival was to her, on that sad summer’s night.  She was not able to suppress her feelings.  When I entered the room, there was but one other person in the house with my mother, and this was a little slave girl who was asleep when I entered.  The impulsive feeling which is ever ready to act itself out at the return of a long absent friend, was more than my bereaved mother could suppress.  And unfortunately for me, the loud shouts of joy at that late hour of the night, awakened the little slave girl, who afterwards betrayed me.  She kept perfectly still, and never let either of us know that she was awake, in order that she might hear our conversation and report it.  Mother informed me where my family was living, and that she would see them the next day, and would make arrangements for us to meet the next night at that house after the people in the village had gone to bed.  I then went off and concealed myself during the next day, and according to promise came back the next night about eleven o’clock.

When I got near the house, moving very cautiously, filled with fearful apprehensions, I saw several men walking around the house as if they were looking for some person.  I went back and waited about one hour, before I returned, and the number of men had increased.  They were still to be seen lurking about this house, with dogs following them.  This strange movement frightened me off again, and I never returned until after midnight, at which time I slipped